Weird Tales #325

by Tanith Lee

  A tall figure is standing on the ledge immediately outside the long window. It is its fingernails upon the glass that produces the sound so like the hail, now that the hail has ceased. Intense fear paralyzed the limbs of the beautiful girl. That one shriek is all she can utter with hand clasped, a face of marble, a heart beating so wildly in her bosom, that each moment it seems as if it would break its confines, eyes distended and fixed upon the window; she waits, frozen with horror. The pattering and clattering of the nails continue. No word is spoken, and now she fancies she can trace the darker form of that figure against the window, and she can see the long arms moving to and fro, feeling for some mode of entrance. What strange light is that which now gradually creeps up into the air? Red and terrible brighter and brighter it grows. The lightning has set fire to a mill, and the reflection of the rapidly consuming building falls upon that long window. There can be no mistake. The figure is there, still feeling for an entrance, and clattering against the glass with its long nails, that appear as if the growth of many years had been untouched. She tries to scream again but a choking sensation comes over her, and she cannot. It is too dreadful; she tries to move; each limb seems weighted down by tons of lead; she can but in a hoarse faint whisper cry,”Help help help help!”

  And:

  The figure turns half round, and the light falls upon its face. It is perfectly white, perfectly bloodless. The eyes look like polished tin; the lips are drawn back, and the principal feature next to those dreadful eyes is the teeth, the fearful looking teeth, projecting like those of some wild animal, hideously, glaringly white, and fang-like.

  And:

  . . . a hissing sound comes from the throat of the hideous being, and as he raises his long, gaunt arms the lips move. He advances. The girl places one small foot on to the floor. She is unconsciously dragging the clothing with her. The door of the room is in that direction; can she reach it? Has she power to walk? Can she withdraw her eyes from the face of the intruder, and so break the hideous charm? God of Heaven! Is it real, or some dream so like reality as to nearly overturn judgment forever? The figure has paused again, and half on the bed and half out of it that young girl lies trembling. Her long hair streams across the entire width of the bed. As she has slowly moved along she has left it streaming across the pillows. The pause lasted about a minute -- oh, what an age of agony. That minute was, indeed, enough for madness to do its full work in. With a sudden rush that could not be foreseen, with a strange howling cry that was enough to awaken terror in every breast, the figure seized the long tresses of her hair, and twining them round his bony hands he held her to the bed. Then she screamed. Heaven granted her then power to scream. Shriek followed shriek in rapid succession. The bedclothes fell in a heap by the side of the bed as she was dragged by her long silken hair completely onto it again. Her beautifully rounded limbs quivered with the agony of her soul. The glassy, horrible eyes of the figure ran over that angelic form with a hideous satisfaction and horrible profanation. He drags her head to the bed’s edge. He forces it back by the long hair still entwined in his grasp. With a plunge he seizes her neck in his fang-like teeth; a gush of blood, and a hideous sucking noise follows. The girl has swooned, and the vampyre is at his hideous repast!

  The gruesome imagery, conjuring up elements of animals, particularly snakes, is quite effective in conjuring a mood or horror and terror. Vampires are not meant to be romantic bedfellows. They are to be feared, hated, hunted, destroyed. If you encounter one at night, rest assured, he won’t be a seductive Count.

  Bram Stoker’s Dracula is undoubtedly the most famous of all vampire novels, and like Varney, the original Dracula is a monster born of the night, but one that is far more insidious. Dracula can kill outright (witness his arriving in London on a ship of corpses, the sailors whose blood has sustained him on his trip), but his seductions are actually prolonged parasitic feedings. He fixes his attentions on the lovely Lucy and begins to drain the life force from her. But he is not just a senseless monster, striking at random, but a calculating fiend. After drugging Lucy’s household, this is how Van Helsing finds Lucy and her mother:

  How shall I describe what we saw? On the bed lay two women, Lucy and her mother. The latter lay farthest in, and she was covered with a white sheet, the edge of which had been blown back by the draught through the broken window, showing the drawn, white, face, with a look of terror fixed upon it. By her side lay Lucy, with face white and still more drawn. The flowers which had been round her neck we found upon her mother’s bosom, and her throat was bare, showing the two little wounds which we had noticed before, but looking horribly white and mangled.

  Dracula is brutal, horrible, a true monster in every sense of the word.

  So where did vampires go wrong? Blame the Atomic Age. With the invention of atom bombs and the coming of the Cold War with the Soviet Union, monsters weren’t as terrifying as real life. The Universal Pictures’ horror movies of the 1930s gave way to escapist comedies like Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. The old monsters were comic relief, not chills and thrills. Of course there have been attempts to reinvent the vampire-as-villain, primarily in movies and television, but Hammer Studios’ productions of the late 1950s and 1960s with Christopher Lee (plus various other remakes and re-inventions of the Dracula legend) never had critical and commercial success on the scale of the original Dracula (1931) with Bela Lugosi. I fault two films in particular with the transformation of vampires to romantic heroes: Dracula (1979), which starred the too-handsome and too-suave Frank Langella as Dracula, and George Hamilton, whose portrayal of Dracula in the romantic comedy Love at First Bite (also 1979) made Dracula a sophisticated romantic hero … and Hamilton gets the girl and gets away at the end of the movie. It’s a short step from these last two films to the romantic figures of Anne Rice, and Laurell K. Hamilton. The emergence of the Goths and their semi-underground culture of vampire adoration yields an audience primed for romantic and heroic vampires. Rice and Laurell Hamilton are probably the two greatest literary proponents of Happy Vampires, McSuckers, safely sanitized vampires as far from Varney and Dracula as you can get. TV shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel both promote the same world … where mortals can love vampires, vampires can be heroes, and happiness is only a bite away. Laurell Hamilton’s world has not just vampires, but were-animals. Anita Blake, vampire hunter, is involved in a love triangle with romantic vampire Jean-Claude and werewolf Richard. Will they rip her throat out and feed in an orgy of blood? Here is a quote from Laurell K. Hamilton’s new Anita Blake novel, Narcissus in Chains ($22.95, hardcover, due out October 2001). It’s #10 in a series which has already begun to hit the New York Times bestseller list. Goth fodder. Perfect for those who can’t wait for the next Anne Rice vampire novel, or watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer. When Anita and the romantic monsters unleash some mystic powers, the result is erotic and titillating:

  I was still pressed in the circle of Richard’s and Jean-Claude’s arms, a strange amount of bare skin touching all of us -- my back, Richard’s chest and stomach, Jean-Claude’s arm. There was something incredibly right about the touching, the closeness. I felt Jean-Claude’s attention turn, before I moved my head to meet his eyes. The look in those drowning eyes held worlds of things unsaid, unasked, all so tremblingly close. Because for once he didn’t see in my eyes the barriers that kept all those words trapped. It had to be the marriage of the marks affecting me, but that night I think he could have asked me anything, anything, and I wasn’t sure I’d say no.

  There is no fear, no dread, no darkness, no horror. These are, indeed, safe and sanitized romantic figures, as far from the original dark visions of vampires as you can get. Somehow, I can just picture Anita and Varney in a room, she with a startled look on her face, whispering, “Help help help help!” as a true creature of darkness begins to feed.

  FROM OUT OF THE CROCODILE’S MOUTH, by Darrell Schweitzer

  I shall draw forth my precious treasure from out of the crocodile’s mouth. I r
eclaim what he has devoured.

  — The Book of Returning (sometimes attributed to Sekenre the Illuminator)

  I

  The birds high above might have noticed him, but he was not prey, and so they continued circling in the evening air, over the marshland, where great reeds stirred in the chill breeze and open water rolled gently, black in the shadows, gleaming orange and gold in the rapidly vanishing sunset.

  Insects sang in the sighing wind. With a splash, a startled heron took to the air, its wings flashing orange, then golden as it vanished.

  But the short, slight figure kept on walking. He wore a loose tunic several sizes too large for him, belted at the waist, and loose trousers rolled up to the knees. A leather bag hung from one shoulder. His bare feet sank into the mud until his legs were splattered with it, but when he walked upon the open water there were only spreading ripples, for he walked on the surface of the water, as weightless as a ghost or a passing mist.

  He might have been a boy in his mid-teens. He had a boy’s face, soft and beardless beneath a tangle of dark hair; but he held a living flame cupped in his outstretched, scarred right hand. This tiny fire flickered in the darkening air, burning nothing; and by these signs the wild creatures knew this was no ordinary child of mankind. The night hawks and owls, circling above him, gathered like a storm, but kept their distance. Crocodiles, drifting like sullen logs, did not stir as he passed.

  He held out the fire to light his way. He walked upon the sunlit waters and the dark; and the night descended suddenly, and the sky filled with brilliant stars around the crescent of a day-old moon, low in the west. The moon sank. For an instant more, the waters gleamed, golden, pale white.

  Then, by subtle changes, the stars faded and were fewer, no longer the stars of Earth at all, but stars of Leshé which is Dream, and has its own strange constellations. Lesh‚ likewise faded as the traveler moved deeper into mystery, to the frontier marches of Tashé which is the country of the Dead.

  Here on the cold, black water, as whispering, pleading, jabbering ghosts gathered around him, he waited for a time, until he saw a dark, lumbering shape rise up a shallow pool. The thing crashed through reeds. It reared up, and he saw clearly the crocodile face and human body — naked, pale, like that of a drowned man — of one of the evatim, the dread messengers of Surat- Kemad, Lord of Death, who was king of this land.

  Anyone who beholds one of the evatim face to face knows that he is about to die, and may, perhaps, have time to breathe a brief prayer.

  Except sorcerers, who do not pray, and who, at times, traffic with the evatim and treat even with Surat-Kemad, the Devouring God, whose mouth is the night sky, whose teeth are all the inescapable stars of Earth, Leshé and Tashé‚ put together.

  The boy waited, fire in his hand, while the crocodile thing crouched down before him and, somewhat to his surprise, removed its head, which proved a mask. The face underneath was flabby, hairless, and pale, indeed like a man long drowned, but the eyes were alive. They gleamed with reflected light, like those of a dog when it nears a campfire. The body, as far as he could tell, was gross, distorted, and moved clumsily. Perhaps it had a tail. It was not something he needed to know, only that sorcerers are ultimately disfigured beyond all recognition by their sorcery, and that this other was one of his own kind, a sorcerer, and therefore his enemy.

  The two of them circled one another on the surface of the black water, warily, like two scorpions in a jar, the boy walking slowly, the other half-crawling.

  The other held out a clawed hand, as if in friendship. The boy drew back.

  It spoke in a voice more like the wind in the reeds than anything human. “We have been allies in the past —”

  “We have had common interests, against others,” said the boy.

  “And now?”

  There was no need to explain that all sorcerers, ageless, pursue one another through the centuries, seeking to devour one another; for whosoever kills a sorcerer becomes that sorcerer, and contains within himself the soul and mind of his victim, and all the others that one has likewise slain, so that each sorcerer is a composite being, with many souls and voices, whatever his exterior visage; and each sorcerer aspires to be the last, incorporating all the others, the sole survivor at the end of time, who will confront the gods.

  This much was written in books. Both of them had read such texts, or composed them.

  They circled.

  “I name you,” the boy said. “I call you He Who Swims Among the Dead. Thus I gain power over you.”

  “I name you Sekenre, son of Vashtem.”

  That made him miss a step. Even now, as they tested one another, feinting, it almost caught him off guard. He steeled himself. The other knew his real name, which his mother had given him three hundred years ago. But at least he didn’t seem to know his secret name, which arises from sorcery; knowledge of which in the hands of an enemy would have been more serious.

  “Sekenre, don’t you remember? We were friends once, long in the past, when you really were a child —”

  Sekenre searched his many minds for any memory of this person and found nothing. He did not ask who he was or had been or what he had become. If ever the two were united in death, one or the other would know.

  “I have what you require,” said the other.

  “What price?”

  “A token. For old times’ sake.”

  “I don’t believe that.”

  “Small matter. I have what you want. One day, you will have what I want. Here is the thing. Take it.”

  The other tossed something into the air. Sekenre caught it with his free hand. The other put his mask back on and sank back into the dark water.

  Sekenre stood alone, a necklace of crocodile teeth dangling from his left hand.

  II

  And he knew, of course, that he held in his hand exactly what he did need, a very great treasure indeed, for these were no ordinary crocodile teeth, but the very teeth of the Surat-Kemad himself, the Eater of Days.

  How, or through what terrible crime the other had obtained this thing, he did not care to ask. If they two ever met again, and fought, and one slew the other, the victor would know everything. It could wait.

  But here was Time itself Reclaimed, in his hand.

  Were it possible for a sorcerer to pray, he might have breathed a brief thanksgiving. Were it possible for him to believe in such things, or disbelieve in them, he might have thanked or disbelieved his luck.

  But for a sorcerer, such things merely are. They fit into some greater pattern, like a handful of tiles from a larger mosaic he can but dimly make out.

  He knew exactly what do to. He walked into the darkness, on the water, among the reeds, through the mist, into the Deadlands. The evatim parted before him, the black water rippling silently, for they knew that the power of their own master was about him.

  He came to a place, a little rising of land, dry and flat behind the barrier of reeds at the water’s edge, which has perhaps been somehow prepared. There he crouched down and drew in the dirt with his finger. He broke off one of the teeth from the necklace. He unintentionally cut his finger in the act of doing so, shook his finger, sucked on it, then patted the front of his tunic several times to make the bleeding stop.

  But that was a small thing. More carefully, he broke the tooth again, and buried one of the pieces in the dirt. The other he put in his mouth, holding it under his tongue.

  He spoke certain words and breathed cold fire upon the earth; and then all around him, as if shadows had somehow gathered and become solid, a house of reeds and wood shaped itself, like a blossom rapidly opening.

  He tried to get up, but hit his head on the underside of the porch. He crawled on hands and knees to get clear, then stood and gaped, open-mouthed with wonder, feeling emotions he had not experienced in a very long time.

  This place had been home, on Earth, in real time, long ago. Of course he knew it had ceased to exist in real time, but here, by the magic of Surat-Kemad
’s tooth, it was reclaimed.

  He bounded up onto the porch, running his hand along the very solid-feeling railing. He opened a shutter and leaned in, then didn’t even bother finding the door and clambered in.

  Then he wept, for memory and joy (though it is written that sorcerers cannot weep, any more than they can pray or believe in luck). He found himself in a room he knew so very well. He had lived here, in this house, not in his childhood, but in what might have counted as his adulthood by ordinary standards, when he was twenty, thirty, fifty, seventy. All his familiar things were about him. A wooden, articulated serpent hung from the ceiling, a hevat such as his mother once made, a thing which could seemingly come alive when filled with wind.

  For old times’ sake, for memory, he had managed to preserve one. He had not seen it in a very long time. Here it was.

  He found his old books on the shelves. His old blanket draped over a chair, the shoes he never wore in a box under the bed.

  On the nightstand was a carven heron, a toy, something he had saved from his actual childhood.

  But those were small things. In this place he had dwelt once, in some semblance of happiness which is seldom afforded to sorcerers, with her, with Kanratica, his beloved.

  Now all he had to do was wait. He lay down on the bed. He thought ruefully that she might scold him for getting his muddy feet on the covers.

  He waited, knowing if that he could reclaim one thing from out of the crocodile’s mouth, he could reclaim another, as long as he didn’t run out of teeth. He put the necklace on, over his head, and ran his hand over the teeth, reassured by the great number of them.